Lecture 30: Sumer—The First Agrarian Civilization
2600 B.C.E., known as the Standard of Ur, depicts the army of Ur, with its
donkey-drawn chariots and large convoys of captives.Inspiring awe by lavish displays of power was one of the keys to statehood.
The royal tombs of Ur, from the late 4th millennium B.C.E., show the
spectacular riches rulers could accumulate and the extraordinary expense
lavished on tombs, temples, and palaces. As in the royal burials of many early
Agrarian civilizations, servants of the ruler were often killed and buried to
serve in the afterlife. From late in the 3rd millennium B.C.E., the typical form
of monumental architecture in Mesopotamia would become the ziggurat, a
stepped pyramid-like temple dedicated to the gods, of which the best preserved
today is that of Ur.Two more signi¿ cant changes occurred about 1,000 years after the appearance
of the ¿ rst states. Sumer’s city-states were united under a single ruler, Sargon,
who ruled from c. 2370 to 2316 B.C.E. from a city called Akkad in northern
Sumer. This pattern of imperial expansion would recur many times in later
Agrarian civilizations. In the centuries after Sargon, Sumer’s population
crashed, apparently as a result of over-irrigation, which led to salination and
undermined the region’s fertility. This pattern, too, would recur many times
in the history of Agrarian civilizations.Voilà! A whole series of linked features came together to establish
the ¿ rst tribute-taking city-states in ancient Sumer. In the next lecture
we ask: How similar was the process of state formation in other early
Agrarian civilizations? ŶChristian, Maps of Time, chap. 9.
Fagan, People of the Earth, chap. 15.
Ristvet, In the Beginning, chap. 4.Essential Reading